50% of motorists back hard shoulders use
Author: Chris Barker
Published: 27 August 2008
50% of AA members have come out in favour of the controlled use of the UK’s hard shoulders as a so-called running lane, whilst just 29% voiced concern, although the AA stresses that some 58% don’t agree with the government’s think-tank plans of charging passenger-less car drivers for facilitating these lanes.Questioning over 12,000 of its members, the AA asked whether or not they thought the system of opening up hard shoulders as extra running lanes at busy times was workable.Having recently piloted the concept on the M42, initial research undertaken by the AA suggests that British motorists on the whole would give the scheme the thumbs up if and when it was rolled out across other areas of the country, in a bid to free-up the flow of traffic on heavily congested motorway networks at certain peak times.The Government’s plans announced in July ‘Roads – Delivering Choice and Reliability’, proposed controlling traffic on motorways using frequent gantries which would regulate speed and carriageway use, with the viable option of converting the hard shoulder into a traffic lane when needs be.AA President, Edmund King said: “It is quite controversial to improve motorway capacity by removing the hard shoulder which is widely regarded as a major safety feature that contributes to Britain’s good safety record on motorways. However, the active traffic management pilot on the M42 east of Birmingham has shown that schemes like this can dramatically improve traffic flow, journey time reliability and retain safety levels.”
The AA’s statistics compiled also observed that the benchmark scheme garnered strong local support, with 65% of members asked for responses in the West Midlands backing the idea, whilst 22% disagreed.Looking closely at the breakdown of figures, it appears that the over 65s – 38% - were the most vocal in their condemnation of the government’s hard shoulder initiative, with the majority – 56% - of praise handed out by the 18 – 24 year age group.The issue of the introduction of pay lanes on motorways threw up further results that the government will be anxious to read. 53% of the AA members invited to respond to the proposals were against the motion of paying full stop, while 58% weren’t impressed with the idea of paying a toll to use the hard shoulder solely as a car share lane, with 38% strongly opposed.
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